Labor News

President Trump signing memoranda in the Oval Office on Monday. He sharply criticized the Trans-Pacific Partnership during last year’s campaign, calling it a bad deal for American workers. Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times

Reprinted from The New York Times by Peter Baker on January 23, 2017.

President Trump formally abandoned the Trans-Pacific Partnership on Monday, pulling away from Asia and scrapping his predecessor’s most significant trade deal on his first full weekday in office, administration officials said.

Trump sharply criticized the partnership agreement during last year’s campaign, calling it a bad deal for American workers. Although the deal had not been approved by Congress, the decision to withdraw the American signature at the start of Trump’s administration is a signal that he plans to follow through on promises to take a more aggressive stance against foreign competitors.

In other action on a busy opening day, Trump ordered a hiring freeze in the federal work force, exempting the military. And he reinstituted limits on nongovernmental organizations that operate overseas and receive American taxpayer money from performing abortions. Republican presidents typically impose those restrictions soon after taking office, and Democratic presidents typically lift them when they take over. …

Aides signaled that Trump may also move quickly on renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement. He is scheduling meetings with the leaders of Canada and Mexico, the two main partners in that pact, first negotiated by the elder President George Bush and pushed through Congress by President Bill Clinton. NAFTA has been a major driver of American trade for nearly two decades, but it has long been divisive, with critics blaming it for lost jobs and lower wages. …